glumshoe:

mybrilliantusername:

@glumshoe @vampireapologist In light of recent posts I thought this might interest you guys…..in a ‘yikes’ type fashion

Those are definitely not real eagle feathers, but are most likely poorly painted turkey feathers (legal). The tail feathers of juvenile eagles are the “classic” dark-tipped white feathers, but they’re rarely “neat” and never uniform.

Real plains warbonnets are much more beautiful and finely-crafted than this garbage. It’s sadly very telling that the search term “real warbonnet” brought up almost exclusively pictures of nearly-naked women modeling crass parodies. Indigenous Americans and First Nations members are exempt from feather laws for good reasons. They are very sacred and, yes, earned. One analogy I’ve seen is comparing them to medals of honor – you wouldn’t wear them without having earned them because that is incredibly disrespectful. Some people would wear unearned medals of honor as a protest/fuck you to the military, but doing so with eagle feathers is a big fuck you to whole spiritual systems and cultural histories that have endured despite violent concerted efforts to eradicate them.

While the seller probably isn’t breaking any US laws by selling these, unless she’s dishonestly marketing them as native-made, it’s still really gross and tiresome to see this kind of shit still going on in 2017 and I hope crafters who make this shit face enough backlash to change their business.